


Steady

by Shinaka



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 14:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18994531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinaka/pseuds/Shinaka
Summary: Terra dissociates but Sabin is there for her. Takes place post-game. Not yet established SabinTerraCW: Although Terra's episodes are not specified, general references to her past are present.





	Steady

**Author's Note:**

> Began this years ago, then started revising and adding onto it recently. Based somewhat on personal experience with dissociative episodes.
> 
> Also SabinTerra isn't an established relationship here but are likely on their way to becoming that in this fic's timeline.

 

Even years after Kefka’s end, Terra sometimes falls deathly quiet as if she’s waiting for something coming around the corner. Sabin is not always the most perceptive; it takes him several months to put together Terra’s pained retreat to her bedroom with the dawn of her moonblood. But he knows what Terra is acting like during these times from years of training with Duncan in the wild.

 

She is acting like prey about to be caught by a much larger and sinister predator.

 

When Sabin turns toward her or when the children ask, “Mama, what’s wrong?”, Terra usually comes back easily to them and smiles as if nothing has happened. She continues with the task before them so fluidly that it’s easy to forget it ever happened until it becomes too awkward or uncomfortable to ask about later.

 

But this time, it’s much harder for her consciousness to return to reality, even as Sabin lightly shakes her small frame. She’s holding her breath as if that would keep her safe from the invisible threat and her pupils are large, too large.

 

“Terra!” He doesn’t want to hurt her but Terra’s eyes won’t focus on his. Sabin is thankful that Duane and Katarin have taken the children elsewhere and left the two of them alone outside. Terra would not have wanted her children to see her like this.

 

Sabin changes tack and moves his hands to cup her face. Theirs is a relationship defined mostly by how indefinite it is, straddling the murky in-between of platonic and romantic love. At the moment though, he just hopes that his hands will attract Terra’s attention from somewhere within and bring her back.

 

The woman blinks once, twice. He can feel her breathing fan his face, and as if from deep waters, Terra’s consciousness slowly floats back to the here and now.

 

“Sabin?” She finally speaks. But when the former esper looks at Sabin’s eyes, close to hers and close to tears, she begins to tremble.

 

“I-I’m so sorry. That took a long time, didn’t it?” Her tears fall silently onto Sabin’s hands, and the monk is alarmed at how many tears Terra can shed so quietly. 

 

He is not going to pretend to understand the complicated and traumatic details of Terra’s past. All he knows is from hearsay: that the Empire captured her when she was an infant and that later on, Kefka brainwashed her into fighting for them. He has never pried for more information before, whether it was due to their party’s focus on completing the next task that would bring them closer to ending Kefka’s nihilistic grip on the world, or after Kefka’s defeat, rebuilding what the crazed man had left behind. 

 

But there is definitely more to her past than he knows, and Sabin hopes that Terra can trust him enough one day to let him know more.

 

At this moment though, the monk knows that it is the simple things that matter more. Leaning his head down to the woman’s ear, he whispers, “Shh, I’m here for you.” One arm reaches around Terra to rub circles on her back, while the other braces her face against his body.

 

“Take all the time you need.”

 

Beneath his gaze, her head bobs slightly in agreement and his chest begins to feel wet and warm from where her face met his skin. Her thin but toned arms slowly encircle his body and then suddenly the breath is partly knocked out of him as the woman squeezes Sabin with a ferocity that he has not seen since she charged at Kefka, resplendent and terrible in power, for the very last time.

 

Sabin can make out a timid, “S-sorry,” from her, even as she crushes his body within her grip. 

 

“There’s no need for that,” he replies. “We’re –“ He hesitates to say “friends” because that would only cheapen what they have shared during and after their last battle with Kefka. But “lovers” is too forward, even though year after year, Sabin has begun to spend more and more time at Mobliz, and to start a conversation about that now would only belittle what Terra is going through.

 

“Partners. So that means we always have each others’ backs! No matter what,” he finishes. But once out of his mouth, the words sound trite and silly. Terra murmurs a sound of acknowledgment that he can also feel through his skin. He can do better than this though, Sabin thinks.

 

Then he scoops her up, legs and all, and hugs her back as hard as he can. While Edgar can use pretty words to move rocks to tears, Sabin has always trusted sheer physicality much more to convey how he felt.

 

_Bear hugs_ , Terra had jokingly referred to them some years ago, a wry smile on her face. The monk had sheepishly turned his face away in response while trying to remember the mantras Duncan had drilled into him for when he was becoming distracted from his training. But when the woman laughs for the first time since slipping into that awful other world, he thinks he wouldn’t mind being called a bear until the end of time.

 

Once the laughter dies down into giggles and then into silent but measured breaths, Terra looks up at him.

 

Her green eyes are still shiny from a film of tears, and her cheeks are covered in wet lines and streaks that reflect in the sunlight and make her glow. Yet her beauty from sadness is more than outweighed by her smile. It is small and hesitant, as if unsure whether it is supposed to appear after what afflicted her but daring to nevertheless. Like crops that still push through the earth even after a hard frost, her smile is a spark of hope that cuts through even what Sabin knows to be painful reminiscences.

 

Sabin wants to tell her so many things at this moment. How she has gone through so much during their adventures together but has come out of it more strong, kind, and wise than ever before. How she deserves so much better than to be tormented by her trauma when she least expects it. How she is much more than the horror in her past, even becoming the lifeblood of a small village when she herself didn’t know when Kefka’s Light of Judgment might come for them next.

 

How she is someone that he wants to always be there for.

 

“Thanks for being here, Sabin,” Terra whispers. The monk ruffles her hair and then cards emerald strands through his thick fingers.

 

“This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does…” She grips one of his arms tightly. And a horrible thought appears in Sabin’s mind then: _What happens when she goes through one of these attacks by herself?_ He grits his teeth against the despair he feels and wills himself to return to the woman in the here and now.

 

“But this was good.” Terra rubs soft lines on his skin. "I wouldn’t mind… if you held me like more.”

 

At this, the woman presses her face against Sabin’s chest once more. “Let me stay like this for a little while, please?”

 

There is no way he can ever say _No_  to her, especially when she asks so sweetly.

 

“Of course,” Sabin says, holding back the urge to cry for her sake. And he hugs the former esper in his arms as hard as he can without hurting her because this is what he knows to do and can do whenever she needs it.

 

Always.


End file.
